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Monday, 13 March 2017
Malcolm Turnbull refuses to rule out One Nation deal at federal election
Western Australia preference deal a mistake, say Barnaby Joyce and
Pauline Hanson, but Turnbull sees no evidence of federal concerns in
rout of Liberals
Senator Pauline Hanson at One Nation’s election night party in Perth on
Saturday. Hanson blamed a preference deal with the Liberals for the
party’s poor showing in the state election.
Photograph: Rebecca Le May/AAP
Malcolm Turnbull
has refused to rule out doing a preference deal with One Nation at the
next federal election despite the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce,
branding the controversial tie-up in Western Australia “a mistake”.
The prime minister told reporters on Sunday after the Liberal party’s thumping loss
in Western Australia the federal contest was still more than two years
away, and preference swaps would be considered by the organisation once
the election loomed.
“The next federal election is more than two years away and all
preference decisions will considered by the party organisation closer to
the time,” Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.
Turnbull declined the opportunity of criticising the WA preference
deal, which backfired in the state campaign, with One Nation performing
below expectations after a scrappy campaign, and the Liberal party suffering a negative swing of more than 15%.
The prime minister said he was happy to criticise unacceptable policies, as he had done when the One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said last Sunday that parents should not be forced to vaccinate their children, but political commentary was up to others.
He declared the state rout had no federal implications because the
campaign had been fought and decided entirely on state issues, a fact
that “everyone acknowledges.”
“There’s no evidence of federal factors playing a role,” the prime minister said.
“It
was very much fought on state issues. When I’ve been in Western
Australia during the campaign and in the lead-up to it, because of
course the campaign has been going on in an informal sense for some time
before it officially started, it was very much focused on state
issues.”
The prime minister’s refusal to either criticise the controversial
preference agreement, or rule out pursuing a similar arrangement at the
federal level, echoes comments from the federal finance minister and WA Senator, Mathias Cormann, on Sunday.
Cormann, who was a significant architect of the deal which put One
Nation ahead of the Nationals in some areas, told the ABC it had been
signed off unanimously by the state executive.
He said it was negotiated in an attempt to put a floor under
the Liberal party’s declining primary vote, which he said was as low as
29% in internal party polling.
The finance minister refused to rule out further cooperation with One
Nation at the national level, saying “these are judgements that will be
made at the right time”.
But both the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, and Joyce, the
Nationals leader, have characterised the preference swap as a mistake.
And one prominent Liberal moderate, the Victorian Russell Broadbent,
joined Joyce’s criticism. He said it was clear the Liberals should never
countenance preference swaps with One Nation.
“That should now be clear and it’s been my position from 1998 until now,” Broadbent told Guardian Australia on Sunday.
Pointing to the WA rout, and One Nation’s poor showing, Broadbent
quipped: “It turns out sophisticated isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
The reference is to a recent characterisation by the Liberal
frontbencher Arthur Sinodinos that One Nation is more sophisticated than it was in its first incarnation. On Saturday night Hanson walked away from the arrangement, saying the preference swap had depressed One Nation’s vote in the state contest.
Hanson said her party should not have done the deal when the premier,
Colin Barnett, was passed his use-by date with the WA public.
Joyce said the deal with One Nation had clearly cost the Liberal
party at the ballot box because it had “confused” the party’s core
constituency.
He said the Liberals in WA had overestimated One Nation’s electoral
appeal, and that was a clear tactical misjudgment. “It hasn’t been a
good day in the office and there are a lot of questions that need to be
asked,” the deputy prime minister told the ABC on Sunday.
Federal Labor also blasted the prime minister’s failure to rule out a
future preference deal with One Nation, and dismissed the prime
minister’s rationale that the campaign turned exclusively on state
issues.
Labor frontbenchers argued federal factors, like an unpopular cut to
penalty rates supported by both the government and One Nation, had
influenced the negative sentiment against the incumbent Barnett
government.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Hanson was able to rule out
a future preference swap with the Liberal party, so it was “weak” of
the prime minister to keep his options open.
Bloodletting in WA began almost immediately after the scale of the
devastation was confirmed. Six former ministers are in danger of losing
their seats in the rout.
The Nationals fared better, copping a negative swing of less than 1%,
although there may be scalps in mining seats. The party’s leader,
Brendon Grylls, is locked in a tough fight in the Pilbara.
The incoming Labor premier, Mark McGowan, admitted some surprise at
the magnitude of the swing. He told reporters in Perth he believed
Saturday night’s result would be close.
“I thought it would be very close, I thought it would be difficult to
win,” McGowan said Sunday. “So what has happened is beyond what I
thought.”
The incoming premier said Labor had made the decision not to court
One Nation in the contest, and he said the Liberal party’s decision to
enter an agreement with Hanson’s party had damaged its political
fortunes. “We were going to govern on our own or not at all,” McGowan
told reporters.
McGowan said the people of WA had voted for change, which was
something Labor intended to bring, but he said he did not underestimate
the enormity of the task.
The Greens, which held their ground in the state election, congratulated McGowan on a “well-fought campaign.”
The Greens WA campaign manager Andrew Beaton said the party intended
to play a constructive role once the final makeup of the parliament was
resolved.
“We held our numbers, and increased them in many places, in an
election with a massive swing against an incumbent government,” Beaton
said Sunday.
“Analysis of preferences show we played a huge role in removing an
environmentally destructive government from office and broke One
Nation’s national momentum.”
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